Pike on Concepts and Omniscience
Originally published on Incinerating
Presuppositionalism
Peter Pike has attempted
to interact with my recent
posting on the question of whether or not an omniscient being would have
its knowledge in the form of concepts. What’s interesting is that he tries to
raise objections to several of my points, but at the end of his post he
expresses firm agreement with my main conclusion. Throughout the content of his
response, however, it seems that he did not grasp the issue that the paper
talks about very well.
For example, he asks:
is it impossible for a being that knows all
that is possible to know to know what a concept is? If it is possible to know
what a concept is, then a being that knows all that is possible to know, would
indeed know these concepts too.
This completely misses the point. Nowhere does my paper argue that an
omniscient being would not know what a concept is. Rather, my point is that it
would not possess that knowledge in the form of concepts. Pike fails to
distinguish between the object of knowledge and the form in which that
knowledge is held. He’s talking about the former while my paper talks about the
latter.
Another example of Pike missing the issue is when he asks:
is it not possible for a being that knows all that
can logically be known to use concepts that He knows to communicate to beings
He created with the ability to understand these same concepts? If God intends
to use concepts to communicate with His creation, how would that cause any
logical problems?
This is a red herring which occurs repeatedly throughout Pike’s response.
Nowhere does my paper conclude that an omniscient being cannot use concepts to
communicate with minds which do possess their knowledge in the form of
concepts. It crossed my mind at one point to make mention of this point, but I
had supposed it was so obvious that I wouldn’t have to. Again, the question is
not what tools an omniscient being would use to communicate to non-omniscient
beings, but in what form would that omniscient being have its knowledge? This
all goes straight over Pike’s head.
Then Pike wrote:
By now, you may be wondering just how
If Pike agrees that his god’s knowledge is “not conceptual,” as he clearly
affirms at the end of his post, then what is he worried about? My paper
provides a rationale, based on the objective theory of concepts, for supposing
that an omniscient being would not have its knowledge in the form of concepts.
Pike himself said his god’s knowledge is not conceptual, but he did not provide
an alternative rationale for supposing this other than the loose statements
found in the bible which say nothing about concepts whatsoever.
Those statements are:
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so
are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah
55:9).
For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in
him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God (1
Corinthians 2:11).
Neither of these verses say anything about whether
or not the god it speaks of possesses its knowledge in the form of concepts. In
fact, just like Pike, the verses he cites make no distinction between the
content of knowledge and the form in which it is retained.
Pike writes:
I’ll interrupt for a second to point out the
obvious problem with the last sentence. “Consciousness is consciousness of
something” demonstrates that
Several points.
First, my statement “consciousness is consciousness of something” was nowhere
offered as a definition. Why does Pike suppose it was? Rather, it is a
statement which makes consciousness’ need for an object explicit.
Second, ‘consciousness’ is an axiomatic concept. Like other axiomatic concepts,
it lies at the fundamental level of the conceptual hierarchy, which means: it
is not defined in terms of prior concepts. Any prior concepts would genetically
assume what is being identified in the definition, since concepts presuppose
consciousness. This is all Basic Concepts 101 stuff.
Again Pike shows that he misses the essence of the argument:
Now it should be noted that I have no objection to
any of the above. Man certainly does seem to think in this manner. But how
As I pointed out above, I did not argue that “an omniscient being cannot
use concepts” such as when it seeks to communicate with other minds which do
have their minds in the form of concepts. Rather I asked whether or not it
would have its own knowledge in the form of concepts, and gave reasons why it
wouldn’t. Pike is welcome to claim that his god has its knowledge in the form
of concepts, but even he came out and expressed agreement with my position that
his god’s knowledge is “not conceptual.”
Pike then got sidetracked on the unrelated issue of whether or not concepts are
open-ended, and presented a thought experiment to substantiate his position
that they don’t have to be. He writes:
Suppose the entire universe consisted of one room
with two objects in the room. These objects both had the same shape. One
observer looked in this room and said that the shape of the first object was
“square.” The other shape is also a square. He can thereby state that if
anything else were to pop into existence with that shape, it would also be
square. He has abstracted the shape “square” and yet has full knowledge of all
the actual existent objects in the universe.
Consider the problems here. For one it asks us to entertain the unreal by
imagining it. That’s fine as far as it goes, but we need to keep in mind that
we’re entering a fake environment at this point, and conclusions produced in the
sterile zone of a fake environment are often not at all applicable to the
actual environment. This is especially the case when that fake environment is
deliberately concocted to neutralize the original issues. The original issue is
whether or not concepts are open-ended, but the scenario Pike presents in his illustration is deliberately crafted so that
open-endedness cannot apply.
Also, he asks us to assume that “the entire universe consisted of one room with
two objects in the room.” “Room”? What does this mean?
Where did he get this concept? That’s right, he got it
from the real environment. To make his thought experiment work, he needs to
borrow from outside it, which makes it an unclean laboratory for developing his
point.
Then, without explanation, Pike adds an “observer.” Is this observer part of
the universe? If so, then we’re asked to contradict what we were first asked to
suppose, namely that the entire universe consisted of one room with two
objects. Now it’s a room with three objects, one of which is an observer. How
many more changes to the thought experiment are we to expect coming down the
pike?
Another problem is that we’re asked to suppose we know something without any
explanation of how we’re supposed to know it; we’re asked to suppose that the
entire universe consists of one room with two (um, make that three) objects in
the room. How would we know this? Pike doesn’t say. We’re supposed to “just
know,” perhaps by stipulation for the sake of an artificial setting needed to
make his point. But even then, Pike undercuts his own point by granting that
the concept ‘square’ which he formed on the basis of only two objects is in
fact open-ended when he says: “He can thereby state that if anything else were
to pop into existence with that shape, it would also be square.” In other
words, if a new object were discovered to possess similarities with those that
were initially integrated to form the concept ‘square’, it could be integrated
into that concept along with the rest. The concept is still open-ended, even on
Pike’s thought experiment!
Pike writes:
Or, to put it another way, if you can
conceptualize based on a few objects, you can conceptualize based on a few more
than that. And if you can conceptualize with more objects, you can conceptualize
even when you have all objects, both real and potential.
This does not reverse the facts that we are directly aware of only a small
number of units at any time, that there are always many units of which we are
not aware at any time, and that we need concepts to help us cognitively manage
those units which lie outside our immediate awareness. Moreover, even if we
conceptualize with a very large sum of units, as Pike proposes, our concepts
will still be open-ended, they will still omit specific measurements, and they
will still be useful to us because they condense an enormous sum of data into
single units. Again, all these points are lost on Pike as he tries to swim
upstream beyond his understanding.
Pike writes:
Of course, I should point out that
Again, Pike has missed what my paper argues. It argues that an omniscient
being would not have its knowledge in the form of concepts. I did not say that
Pike's god could not have the ability to form concepts. I'm fully aware that
someone who believes there's a god can attribute any abilities to it he
imagines, since in the end imagination is what he has to go on.
Pike then concedes:
But God did not need to create man either, and He
chose to do so. Once God created man, then the need would certainly be there if
He desired to communicate with man. If God did not wish to communicate with
man, then here would be no need for Him to be able to form concepts; but
because that view is heretical to the Christian position
So the Christian god "did not need to create man," but since it
"chose to do so," did it have to create man with a mind that retains
its knowledge in the form of concepts, or was this an option for the Christian
god as well? The way Pike's response reads, it does
not seem to allow his god any options on this matter once it chose to create
man. I'd be surprised, however, if Pike did not think
his god could have created man without a conceptual format for knowledge
retention. Regardless, what Pike says here is damning enough for one of his
later points.
Pike then writes that
the Bible doesn't treat God's knowledge as
only "conceptual in nature."
I’d like to see where it treats any knowledge as “conceptual in nature.”
From what I can tell, the bible doesn’t speak of concepts at all and its
authors display no significant knowledge of the process by which concepts are
formed.
Pike writes:
But what
On the contrary, I am fully aware that a god can do whatever its believers
are willing to imagine it does. Imagination is the ultimate standard when it
comes to the content of god-belief. But notice how Pike still hasn't grasped
what my paper is arguing? Take a look:
God knows what concepts are; if He is all-knowing,
He knows not only all objects but all true conceptualizations of these objects too. God can use them to communicate (revelation)
with man. There is nothing inherently illogical with this.
Pike still confuses the object of knowledge with the form in which it is
possessed. My paper does not argue that Pike's god would not know what concepts
are, or that it would not know "all true conceptualizations." Rather,
it asks in what form would it possess that knowledge,
and answers that it would not be in the form of concepts.
Pike continues:
Since, according to this view, the Christian god
"has no 'percepts' from which He constructs His knowledge," it would
have no need for a faculty which "integrates and thus condenses a group of
percepts into a single mental whole."
Once again,
How is this begging the question? If it is the case that that the Christian
god "has no 'percepts'," as Bahnsen has affirmed, then it could not -
on an objective understanding - have concepts, for concepts are ultimately
formed from the basis of percepts. So I'm simply taking Bahnsen's point to the
next logical step.
At any rate, Pike himself stated above that his god "did not need to
create man" in the first place. On Pike's view, his god chose to
create man. If the issue at this point is the Christian god's use of concepts
for the purpose of communicating with minds which do possess their knowledge in
the form of concepts, this would - as I indicated - still not be an issue of
need. Pike himself makes it a matter of his god's wishing, even though
Paul Manata tells
us that "God doesn't wish."
Pike concludes:
God's knowledge--what He Himself knows--is not
conceptual.
I am pleased that Pike has agreed that his god’s knowledge is not
conceptual. I am pleased because this conclusion will later lend itself as a
premise in a broader argument, and I have it on record now that Pike endorses
it. But this does lead to a question: If the Christian god does not possess its
knowledge in conceptual form, what is the form in which it possesses its
knowledge? Pike did not speak to this.
____________________________________________